Deep Exhale

I don't always meditate, but when I do, I find that it helps me in significant ways.



It's been a long time since I've pursued meditation as a mode of living....that is, made time for it on a consistent basis such that it became foundational in my life. A very long time. This is unfortunate, but understandable....I just fail to carve out a station for it in my day-to-day activities. Perhaps it is that I am unwilling to commit to it because I've got more important priorities (unlikely, considering how much time I spend socializing and imbibing, etc.), or perhaps it is that I am intimidated by it. I can't precisely calculate the equation which leaves me in vapid stupors of non-reflection. The more frustrating angle, however, is that each time I *do* make time for it, it ends up being incredibly fruitful and rewarding. I have such a solid track record with it making me feel good, feel great, that I don't know why my brain refuses to make a habit of it. Maybe I feel the need to do it in a social setting, so that I don't feel so secluded during my time spent sitting. I'm sure that Portland, of all cities, has active communities who pursue awareness and presence together. Perhaps I've just slipped into a mode of being too hedonistic, and I need to consciously redirect my intentions towards the more fulfilling motions of thought~

Regardless, I sat down on my meditation cushion the other day with the intention of just staring out my floor-level single-pane window and trying to void my mind of thoughts. This, as some of you may know, is a startlingly difficult task to accomplish the first time that you sit after a long drought of meditation. Your mind rebels against you, trying to prod you towards social activities or the numbing sensations of the internet. Your body clashes with your intention as well, persistently trying to realign itself into poor postures and arched limbs. Posture may be an even bigger struggle for me personally than the thought redirection, to be honest...it's one of the things I've hoped that meditation would help me to improve (and it has, but only when I am consistent with it). A distracted mind is mildly frustrating when you cannot reign it in, but an ill-postured body causes physical pain after about five minutes....which - at least my mind - tends to treat on a higher order of attention.

I didn't have a terribly long sit; perhaps twenty minutes all said. Mental frustration, bodily fatigue, communicative distractions all in play. Near the end, however, I remembered a little technique that the Shambhala crew in Boulder taught me during one of their classes...."Breathing in, I am myself. Breathing out, I am here". It sounds nonsensical if you haven't shared in the stock of meditative frustrations, I am sure, but this little phrase has helped me immensely over the years. Most seasoned meditation initiates that you speak to (or yoga, or tai-chi; what have you) will tell you that one of the most important functions is breath. From what I gather, both in word and in practice, is that this is because focusing on your breathing gives you something simple, something rhythmic, to sharpen the blade of your mind upon. It does not involve words - which as far as voiding your mind goes, helps significantly - and it caresses your entire being, lulling you into a focused complacency (perhaps it mimics beta waves in your brain, or some such hard science). All I know is that it leaves you with purely physical responses....an inward-focus that observes the breath as it enters and exits your body, and the general path of that lifeblood as it circulates through you in between the two.

Personally, as I breathe in and out, I find it helps me greatly to focus on the aforementioned mantra...breathing in, I am myself; breathing out, I am here. When I flow over the first half in my mind, as I breathe in, it somehow delivers to me a wordless phantasmagoria of all the most significant images and notions in my life which I have come to associate with myself. Pictures swirl around my head like turning pages in a photo album, and trails of words, morals, demons, personal meanings and truths snake around the contours of my body and mind, informing and defining me in all the ways which I have become accustomed to being an isolated, self-contained consciousness. There are countless reasons why this is a powerful experience, but most prominently and forefront in my mind is that is plucks me from the amalgam of society like some sort of spiritual crane-game, focusing me on myself, both my meanings and my methods, for best and for worst.

Secondly, I exhale, reciting the second half of the guidance: breathing out, I am here. This phrase immediately grounds me....wraps up my whole from the in-breath, wordless but colorful, and plants it firmly in the ground wherever I happen to be. My roots flood outward, connecting to objects and expanses which surround me, and I feel the empowerment of being a sentient being placed in a specific time and place, with the self-capacity necessary to change all of it, any of it, if I so choose to, either by plotted plan or capricious whim. It stirs up a frenzy of appreciation for the ability to be here (there), to perceive and process everything that is going around me, and for the gift of self-agency which brought me here and continues to bring me farther still in every waking moment.

The I repeat, recycle, until clean or overly-fatigued.

These two concepts, anchored on the in-breath and the out-breath, create a powerful orbit of awakening within me, a cadence which structures my mind. When I step away from meditating, these things stick with me for a time (sometimes short, sometimes longer) and generate an intentional consciousness which is less distracted, more precise and yet more open. I do it for the perspective, I do it for the appreciation which is suddenly infused into each object, each person, each motion and feeling. I do it because it makes me feel, for a time, like the best incarnation of myself that I can possibly be.

Normally this process is incredibly frustrating the first few times that I sit down to do it after being away from any semblance of a routine, but a few days ago, for whatever reason, mental calm pervaded quickly (if not briefly). Each time I am able to relax into the situation, I learn something new about it....information seems to come in waves throughout life; when repeating the same activity, you will gain new perspective upon it. Regardless, a bit of the meaning of what I realized was infused into the last few paragraphs, but essentially it was that the breath embodies both of our human functions within the universe. When breathing in, I effectively breathe the world into myself....taking in its objects, thoughts, sensations, triumphs, and maladies. My body processes them in what way it sees fit, which usually I ask for minimal oversight on, and stores them accordingly. Then, breathing out, I release these transformed impressions back into the world in the form of new thoughts, new actions, new objects and achievements. Essentially I am a processing agent for the universe, perpetually draining it and destroying it, invigorating and renewing it. I see how easy it is to lose control of your own thoughts, your own processes, and in some small way this is doing the world a large injustice. If you find the ability and the strength to maintain focus, to output something equal or better than what you take in, it will transform everything around you.

To breathe is an art form; to breathe is life. Our breath is the breath of the universe.

The Art of War

Alright, I haven't updated this business since I was in Europe, which last I checked was over 2 months ago. I'm bordering on a large amount of frustration with my novel, and I think the main problem is Colorado Springs. I mean, perhaps it is my mindstate, and I shouldn't be blaming something as mindless and unlikely as an entire city. Still, though, I feel like there is some merit to the claim when analyzed in the proper light.

Moreso than anything else, it is MY particular experience of this city. I have a few scattered friends left here, but the majority of them are either running in ruts that they have dug for themselves, or trapped in downward-spiraling relationships which rust over most of the basic enjoyments of life for them. This is a frustrating position for me to be in, because I feel like I don't have a correct or healthy social outlet to really satiate my appetites for interaction. In Portland and especially in Europe, I had droves of people to express myself to and explore with. Here, I barely have a reason to leave the house. You would think, at first glance, that this would be good for a writing project...giving me plenty of time to buckle down and get invigorated about the world that I am creating in my head. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this is not working well for me. When I get up in the morning, I often look at my computer and feel a shiver of revulsion towards it. I occupy myself in other ways, with books or movies or something of the sort. Then I start to feel guilty because I know I have so much progress that I need to be spindling off my fingertips, and it is not happening.

Sometimes I do find bursts of inspiration....I usually try to write at least once or twice a day. Most of these efforts end in frustration (and moreso, distraction, I think because I feel socially unfulfilled for the time being), but some of them do result in writing and story progress which I am proud of. I'm at least making progress, even if not at the clip that I would hope for. The mainline of this post, however, is a concern about writing in general, because I feel that my hesitance and dodging of it is beginning to color the activity, the experience of actually writing, in a dismal grey. Whereas before....perhaps before, it was a vibrant green, or a cerulean blue~

Karl at Trident (where I currently am, coincidentally) once told me that the most important time to write, to his mind, was when you were most frustrated with your writing process and lack of inspiration. It rung somewhat true to me at the time, but I'm beginning now to realize how many pages of experience that sentence probably resonated with in his mind. I was amateur (at best) then; hell, I would be hard-pressed to call myself anything but amateur still. This guy was probably in his mid-fifties, though, so to him it must be (even though I didn't know it at the time he spoke it) an overarching axiom which governed his life, his entire creative process. Now that I can apply my more seasoned perspective to this one-upon-a-statement of his, it begins to snowball with meaning. I can only imagine that it will continue to do so for the rest of my life, or writing career....whichever turns out to be shorter.

I know deep down that if I continue to press on in my efforts to write (I am talking now about a singular instance, one moment where I apply my fingers to the keyboard and try to push one of them a millimeter down, enough to make a single character register - but knowing that to do this is a first brushstroke, and it will necessarily govern every one which follows it), I will eventually break through to expressing something potent, something which I feel is meaningful to me personally, to the point where sentences will begin to tumble through my mind faster than my hands can record them. That's the goal; also the rub. Many times that I end up sitting with my hands resting gingerly on the keys, I cannot make that first millimeter-drop. I get anxious. And when that happens, your body expresses itself as it usually does in situations of anxiety: activating your fight-or-flight response; stealing electricity from your imagination and surging instead straight to the amygdala. Then I just close the screen....then I just turn on an episode of Seinfeld.

I feel like if I had more satiation, my creativity would flow much more freely. My mind would latch easier onto concepts, and develop them in intriguing ways. This city in Winter, however, leaves me feeling stagnant on many fronts. It drones and buzzes and dulls the blade of my mind, and I think this is fatiguing me....physically, from just sitting much of the time and perhaps not getting enough exercise (a writer's curse as well), but also mentally, crushing my creativity by not supplying an outlet for interaction with nature, for witticisms traded amongst friends, for philosophy which juices the mind for all its contents.

I'll do my best with the situation as I can until I get back to Portland. Only a month more~ The goal is a first draft by the time I arrive. We'll find out if that's a reasonable expectation.

Paris - 9/11/10

Well, first, allow me to update the rest of the France section. After day one, I woke up by myself and walked over to the Musee D'Orsee (I think this is the spelling). This was, overall, one of the better museums I had gone to thus far on the trip. There was good representation from many of the artists I enjoy, especially the impressionists....saw paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Pissarro, Monet, Rembrandt, and a card-catalogue's worth of other painters with whom I wasn't familiar. The crowning achievement of the D'Orsee was their sculpture collection, however, which was vast. One of the the ticket packages included a sculpture garden with works by Rodin, and I was disappointed that when I attempted to purchase said package I was denied as too much time had allegedly passed in the day. Happily, however, there was a good share of Rodin as well as countless other sculptors in the regular portions of the museum.

After that I wandered around aimlessly South of the Seine river, which divides Paris into two halves. I randomly stumbled upon Notre Dame, which was fortunate because I had forgotten that it was present in Paris at this point and probably would not have seen it otherwise. This cathedral was stunning, staggering. I managed to leave there just a little before the good part of the sunset, so at least the light was dynamic for a few of my photos of the place. It's very strange though, walking along the tourist-portioned sections along the perimeters of the cathedral, all while regular Catholic services are going on for the people within the velvet rope barriers. It feels like the tourist presence is incredibly obtrusive, and I'm not quite certain how the regular church patrons (as well as diocese) put up with all the flashing lights and muffled footsteps crashing about their place of worship at all hours. Even for as majestic as that church is, the rampant tourism of the place rather cheapened the experience of going there. I stayed for a bit of the service and then left when I felt overwhelmed. It's a powerful place; there is no escaping the vibrations of their pipe organ.

The next day I wandered up to the train station to purchase my ticket to Amsterdam, because I needed to book it beforehand to reserve space. This put me up by Montmartre, so I took in some of the sights there. Sacre Coure is an amazing chapel on the pinpoint top of a steep hill, and when you get up to the top of it you not only have an amazing tour of a chapel - which, if not rivaling Notre Dame, at least comes close – but also an amazing panoramic view of all of Southern Paris. There are people littered all over the grassier parts of the hill, as well as musicians playing harps and guitars and various scammers and schemers trying to rope people in to purchasing small bits of colored string by using basic psychological principles. I'm really glad I made it to this spot. Afterwards, I walked down through Montmartre and got a coffee at the cafe in which Amelie was shot. It looked drastically different from it's representation in the movie, but they certainly capitalize on the marketing involved in being associated with a blockbuster movie~

On my last day in Paris I woke up, said goodbye to the people I had met at the hostel, and walked over to the Louvre. This museum was too much, literally. If I had a week of exploring it I would perhaps then come close to seeing the majority of their art. Instead, you have to be very selective about where and what you intend to see, because the crowds are incredibly daunting, both slowing you down in between exhibits and speeding you up to the point where you cannot comfortable observe a painting for more than ten seconds without feeling as though you are causing a bottlenecking of the crowd behind you. At least, this was the case in the Denon wing, which is where most of the famous paintings (Mona Lisa, etc) are. I hit this spot first because I knew the crowds would be smaller early in the morning...I didn't go back later but I imagine that they were daunting (at best) in the afternoon. Then I toured through various cultural sections, ending in the Louvre sculpture gardens. I had thought that the D'Orsee had an intimidating sculpture collection, but the Louvre put it to shame (mostly older pieces, but still.) I spent far too long here, and ended up leaving the museum right after in order to make it back to the train station for the Amsterdam rail.

Paris

Arriving in Paris was a shitstorm. I may have forgotten to mention that while I was in London, they decided to have a rail-strike which made traveling around the city somewhat difficult for the last two days that I was there. The train to Paris was still running luckily, but aside from that, not much. Fast forward to Paris....I arrive and the exact same thing is going on here. Basically on the same days, just pushed out perfectly to fuck with me the maximum amount. I tried to laugh about it at first, but then it became less and less funny when all the hostels and hotels within a kilometer of the rail station had either been booked up by people screwed over waiting for their trains, or other usual travelers such as myself who arrived early enough to score them. After a very frustrating march around Montmartre looking for a spot to sleep, I returned to the train station resolute to just sleep there, but even that is not allowed apparently as there is not much space for it.

So, I went nearby and started asking around about places to stay, finally hearing about a little youth hostel by the Louvre which had rooms available. It was over a mile away and already 11:30 PM, but fuck it, I said to myself, I'm going to walk there with the backpack and all. That went decently enough for about ten minutes, until it started to rain, and then soon after started to pour. I hate blowing money unnecessarily, but at this point I hailed a taxi to get to the spot. The driver spoke not one word of English, which was fantastic for me, as you can imagine. Also, taxi drivers in Paris? Extremely slow.

Eventually I made it to the hostel and calmed down enough to relax and fall asleep. The next day I woke up and met a few good people in the hostel...Santiago, from Argentina, and Vout, a professional-caliber pole-vaulter and track-and-field athlete from Holland. These guys were awesome, and conveniently had not yet done much in the city. We embarked first to a cemetery which Vout's father had told him to visit, the 'Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise', which was, at least as far into the Paris stay as I am currently, the coolest thing I have done here. It was ridiculously mind-blowing. First off, it is devastatingly huge. Secondly, every grave and tomb is an absolute piece of art, and about half or more are gigantic. I have somewhere on the order of 50 pictures just from the time we spent there. Lastly, there are a whole host of famous people buried there. We did not figure this out until we stumbled upon Chopin's grave, which was basically covered in fresh-cut flowers from all of his adoring contemporary fans. Later we found a map and sought out the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Marcel Proust. Obviously I was the one making the calls on which ones we saw~

Then we hopped on a bus and rolled out across the city, seeing a bunch of landmarks just from the windows there. We got out at the Eiffel Tower, and walked all over from there, basically all the way back to our hostel by the Louvre. We saw many huge buildings with amazing architecture, as well as the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's Tomb, the Grand and Petite Palais(es?), and Champs Elysees (basically a street, but it has a lot of cred around here for tourists). When we got back to the hostel we relaxed a bit and then went out for food and debauchery, roping in some girls and guys as we went, and had a blast on the town although much of it was spent wandering around on drunken goose-chases for trendy bars which may or may not have existed. Overall a great time.

Today is now the next day, and I've done some stuff, but I'd rather stop writing for now and recharge a bit. Will upload some photos from this section when I get more moments. Also, these entries are going to be extremely sporadic because I am having extreme difficulty with internets out here....most places charge for it, and even when I find a free network the EeePC has serious problems when it comes to connecting. I hope this changes in the next few countries.

Au revoir~

Monsoir Mautchez

More of London

Well, how about an update on how the rest of London went? Let me start at the beginning. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marrying Humperdink in about chalf an hour.

To begin with, my entrance into London was somewhat remarkable, as I thought that they might throw me out the proverbial gates and send me back home without a trip under my belt. When I got in line for customs or entrance or whatever you call the passport check, I was directed to a man who would be best described as somewhere in the spectrum between mildly upset and downright surly. It was as though someone ran over his beloved dog the night before.

When I got up to the window he began drilling me with questions, most of which I had no legitimate answer for. Mind you, it is his job to look out for suspicious behavior; I don't believe that I was acting suspiciously in the least. My usual chipper self after a red-eye flight, which took some effort. He asked me where I was staying since I hadn't written it in on the card. I told him that I didn't know yet; my friends were out of town and I hadn't felt comfortable booking a hostel sight-unseen, since I knew of a few that were in the same general area. Agent did not like this. Then he asked me for proof that I was leaving his country sometime soon (what a jerk), and I told him that I was flying back from Madrid but that I didn't have a hard copy of the ticket on my person. Agent did not like this. I told him that I was taking the Eurostar to France in less than a week, which I also had not yet booked. Apparently I am a shadow with no evidence. They do not like this.

He also asked me a barrage of other uncomfortable questions, such as how much hard currency I had on me ($30 US), and how much was in the checking account which I was planning on accessing from ATM's, as well as whether or not I had any proof of the reported sum. Agent did not like that I had none of this. But, in the end, my charming demeanor won out and he let me into England with a bit of a lecture.

Jerk.

After that minor hiccup, things went much more smoothly. I found a great hostel, met some cool people from South Africa and Australia, and then proceeded to do a variety of things that normal tourists go do, and some that they do not. I visited the British Museum, which was amazing. They have the Rosetta Stone, etc, and some of the most detail-oriented recovered art and metalwork which I have ever borne witness to. I walked along some good areas: Trafalgar Sq (where I stumbled upon a very unlikely poker-event where I got to play a few free games for prizes), Piccadilly Circus (no lions or bears, just breakdancers), Hyde Park (Speaker's Corner has been bastardized and was a huge letdown, but the park is beautiful), and Camden Market which was an amazing collection of people and booths/stables/stores selling just about any item or food which you could desire.....imagine all the open-air markets in Oregon and Washington all smashed into one area~

I also went to the Science Museum, which for how general a name it has was quite good. They have a great interactive psychology exhibit which was mentally accessible and challenging for both 5-year olds and 27-year olds. I don't know where to put the hyphen when I type ages. Additionally I met up with my South African friends at the Tate Modern (art museum), which was just about the most spectacular art museum I have witnessed. They have loads of amazing surrealistic and progressive art that I had never seen before, even in photos. It was a crash-course in a whole movement of painting and sculpture. Nearby I went to the Globe Theatre (Shakespeare y'all), but refused to pay seventeen pounds to tour it's meager interior regions. Ah well.

Lastly I met up with Will and Ilana when they got back from Paris, and took a train out to Birmingham (pronounced birmin-gum) with them, which is where Will lives now while working at Oxford. I wrestled with the iPhone issue for awhile and probably just made it worse (might not even work when I get back to the states, now...), but then we went and got some astoundingly-delicious curry at an Indian restaurant close-by their art-deco apartment. We also grabbed a pint at a quaint local pub which looked more like an tea-shop than a bar...it looks like they have a good neighborhood. We played some games, and Will, who is a gentleman and a scholar, did me the favor of lending me his iPod and a phone which can make use of the SIM card which I bought. Thanks dude; they have been a big help.

Etc, etc; then I went to Paris which is where I write this from. I'll save that whole thing for another entry. Photos you ask? Why yes, I did take a few hundred. I might try to upload later but for now, it is le hassle.

9/3/10 - London

It is ridiculous how discombobulated one becomes while traveling. You never really feel 'on top' of your game, because the ground is shifting underneath you so often and you have vastly fewer resources at your disposal. It's difficult to feel 100% at a bar when you've been wearing the same clothes for the past two days, your hair is wind-tossed, and you haven't really cleaned yourself up for some hours because you've been on the go from place to place (none of them home) and all the bathrooms in the progressive country which you are in have adopted air hand-dryers - which sound like planes taking off - instead of paper towels. I never really have any privacy, either, which is annoying. I'm always feeling rushed when doing things that need done...checking the internet on the hostel computers, taking showers, using the sink in the room to brush teeth, shave, etc. Having other people around ALL the time is really a pain.

On top of that, perhaps the phone which you've taken with you and which used to work with your old SIM card in America has decided to reject the new one you've gotten for international calls, and reject it so HARD that it crashes and leaves you unable to use any of the functions which it used to perform, including being your sole source of all the music which you love and were planning on listening to in various exotic scenarios. You'd probably know how to fix it if you had your laptop here, but instead you have a little plastic one which is running an extremely obscure operating system which you haven't even come close to figuring out (I seriously can't even find a readout of how much battery is left, which is really important information to have), and which also coincidentally refuses to connect to any wi-fi networks which you instruct it to.

So that's where my day is at so far. I decided to be less upset and just take the subway to the Science Museum, which, for being as general of a museum name as possible, was actually quite well executed. Interactivity + Science = Success, at least in the museum world. The Exploratorium in SF knows what I'm talking about. Also, all the museums here are as free as watching the dingy-coloured (spelling what? it's correct here) birds which amble all over the sidewalks, so that's a nice touch. Actually, for having as expensive of a reputation as London does, I think I am doing quite well on expenditures here. 16 pounds a night for the hostel bed, and beyond that maybe 10 or 15 a day for food so far, plus 7 for transportation. Well, I thought I was doing well until I did the math on the currency conversion just now. Regardless, I'm spending significantly less than I did in New York (I think). I haven't really been drinking here, though, so I imagine that the probability of the damage approaching critical hit levels is high if I begin doing that. Luckily I have a saving throw for having a bunch of writing to accomplish.


Science Museum

On the positive side as well, my worst-snoring-from-a-roommate-ever hostel experience had me lying awake in bed for a little while, and I came up with some good progress (in my head) on my writing project. I feel like I haven't devoted practically any time to it at all so far, being busy with sightseeing and meeting people and eating, etc.

So, lately has been a series of mixed emotions about things...HOWEVER even with all this said I am still swinging with a +3 bonus on account of being in a new city, a new country, and being exposed to all the refreshing differences on large and small scales. Hopefully as I get more accustomed to being a traveler I will either develop techniques which will eliminate a lot of these discomforts, or I will just get used to them and consider them necessary evils. Although, it is TOTALLY not necessary for my iPhone to have bricked. Come on travel gods.

Oh, also, I missed my hostel's included breakfast because I don't have an alarm on account of the phone thing, but I got This instead:



Nomz.

Dissolve

I am sitting at the Rocking Frog, knowing that I should sit here and write yet desirous (after listening again to the Tai Chi interview) of moving my body throughout the world, just to experience the connection with my motions and explore my awareness of them on various levels. Also, however, I begin to realize, to have dawn upon me, the importance of sitting still. When motionless, your body has less to focus on, and the movements of your mind become more accessible to you. The tendrils of thought, reaching out and feeling/filtering the world and your experience of it. I say not that static is necessary for attainment of mind-presence, but that meditative thought can be a tool to help you acknowledge which directions your mind gravitates towards, and how forcefully or stubbornly it travels. This can also be the state for slight adjustments, using your presence within this usually-shrouded process to tweak your own neural pathways and reactions.

Additionally, this helps me to grasp something which I have had some curiosity about for some time now, which is ritual motions and sounds. Beta waves, caressing the brain; tribal chants, unlocking depths of perception; walking and running meditations, pacing your thoughts differently than they might have drummed upon you before. These are all....unusual...for lack of a better. They, like drugs, remove you from the stagnant tar-pits of routine into which we all sink for majorities of our time. Challenging the mind...taking it out of expectation – from solid ground to quicksand. When you are displaced, you must think on your feet....and what better way to prepare for any possible future than displacing yourself as much as possible, adapting to all terrains?

Something about a tribal chant...removing the individual from himself, removing accountability and identity, unshackling from the body and expanding into the far-reaching pulses of sound, and beyond them even the silent world. When one's self is already dissolved into sound, you see, a significant portion of the bridge between self and nothingness has already been traversed. Can you imagine what that is like? What a liberating, frightening experience that must be?

Hopefully we all experience something so liberating, by degrees, in our own lifetimes. But with society as fractured as it currently is, I find it hard to believe that we could experience it with the same authenticity as a tribe might have. Being a part of that movement, of that sound-generation, in which the barriers between individuals completely dissipate and you become a singular unity...I can't for the life of me imagine what that would be like. I want to.

Neutral Jing

What has been on my mind lately? I've become so distanced from the process of writing...I used to have such a reign of what my mind was processing from day to day, recording, remembering. But now, on the brink of this trip, I feel like I have been exercising the privileges of being social, blowing off my own creative work in an effort to spend time with people before leaving them for an indeterminate portion of time. I'm having thoughts, certainly, but somehow they become shattered by the frantic schedule I'm keeping...not having a good sit to sift through them, they become so pummeled by the constant flood of sensations that they are unrecognizable when I come back around to thinking about them, and I forget where I might have left off. What I was headed toward. What emotions I was spun up in when I first pioneered them. Without vigilance regarding these things, it becomes very difficult to trace a thread throughout one's thoughts...to keep a procession, instead of slipping in rank. I follow my thoughts from A to G, but then distance myself from them for a time. When I come back to them, I have a vague semblance of what G might have entailed, but it loses all context and meaning if I don't have the foundations of E and F still firm underneath it. Thus I regress back beyond the last achievement, resting perhaps at C, and must push forth again towards the distances. In the meantime, though, all my motivations have changed, and the G which I may reach is distinctly different from the G which I previously excavated. A troubling business, this 'thought'.

Overall, I'm pleased with how whimsical the world and my mind are when they orbit one another. Things come up which I could not have foreseen; any moment can occasion an explosion of personality or philosophy. It is bothersome, however, to acknowledge that I have no idea what a particular trigger might be or look like. There are such moments when I am caught up in a social circle, and something strikes offhanded, some flash or coincidence on my peripheral vision. I thoughtlessly acknowledge it, but being social requires a constant 'group' presence, a mask, and in pursuit of this I abandon the distinct subjectivity of such glimmers. I may club and drag them back to my tribe, but in doing so I alter them differently than if I were to be alone observing them...I turn them on their head for comedic effect, I dilute them for the masses and exploit some simplicity of what might have been a great concept had I pursued it on my own or in the company of genuine discourse. Occasionally I feel the charlatanry of this process, and I feel somewhat shamed, diminished by it.

Lately I have been running in packs. This is an oddity for me...I'm used to being around a single other person, or perhaps two. The dynamics of these situations are notably dintinct...the broachable topics being drastically different in varying degrees of severity. With a lone companion, one can talk about anything one wants...still the topic will find itself fair game. It may be shot down, evaded for the purposes of comfort, but it will at least find attention and acknowledgment. I miss having an intelligent girlfriend. It's too hard to bring such things up in group discussion, or especially in party-scenarios where one must constantly keep pace with the fluid dance of many partners, many conversations which ideally should be so simple (yet clever!) that others can easily drift in and out of them at their moment's pleasure. I've never been tops at this simplistic cleverness. I am somewhat in awe of those who are~ I lack those razor-sharp, caustic, fervent tendencies...I gravitate, generate, slowly roll into presence like a timpani. I'm beginning to think it has to do with different dispersals of energy...separate and chosen (if unconsciously) types of expression. I am learning from these quick-witted types; I can switch this on if I need to. It feels inauthentic, to me, and I doubt that I could keep it up for long stretches....this conversational sprint. But it is there, a tool at my disposal, and I notice how it alters situations, how it commands. I feel the heat and the power of this clearly incendiary technique. I could not burn like this for long - my hourglass turns - I require respite, shelter. I am mostly sorcerer, but augmented with warrior tendencies at my reserve.

Some Things I am Excited About

I may not have updated everyone recently...I am quitting the job and traveling for an indeterminate period of time. Holy shit, right? Before you go and worry yourselves, this has been a long time coming...if you've read anything that I've written here, or know me as a person in general, you probably have the sense that 'jobs' and I do not get along in the most idyllic form of camaraderie. We just don't see eye to eye. I dislike being lorded over and told specifically what to do with my time, and they dislike being disobeyed and made a secondary priority amidst the many facets of any given life. Yobs are supposed to be function, to be purpose! Why does Matt dislike us so?

I don't feel the need to explain myself, because I feel that 80% of my friends are sympathetic, working jobs such that they can survive comfortably as opposed to harshly, garnering responsibility...everything we are instructed to revere. At any rate, I find myself excited to take a portion of time off, to stir my life around and agitate the potencies which have settled and lie dormant at present. This is one of my focii as I bound about - to figure out a better mode of life, of reasoning which still supports me but which compromises less of my being and my intended existence/expression in the meantime. This is a monstrous task, but it also has the charm of being an enjoyable one....juggling possible extensions and iterations of myself, finding one which I am most comfortable with but which also allows a more thorough and justified presence of mind, streaming the incantations which I desire most to express.

To travel: here I come. After much deliberation (months) and funding (years) and waiting (decades), I have settled upon a position of "fuck it" regarding my finances as they stand now, and purposefully select the option wherein I discharge all my hard currency into Europe's disastrous economic situation in an effort to bolster it in my own meager way. Also, this will include me receiving many places to stay and transportation to and fro and delicacies heretofore unknown by my domestic palate. Kind of a perk, right? Just doing my best to help out the economy.

Travels as planned: ~3 months. New York, England, France, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain. Bouncing here and there, with the exception of Italy which will be a 3 or 4-week stint (more on this in a second). Finally the excitement is eclipsing the nervousness, and I feel like my mind will have entire worlds and perspectives to absorb, and hopefully an equal or greater amount to output based on this input. That's right; much of this is an artistic journey, with the aim of exploding my mind into a million pieces, energy which I hope to use to construct many a work of fiction. Also, there will be sightseeing and friendship-forging and exploration of offbeat paths.

Italy. I am staying at a monastery here for 4 weeks. This will be wonderful, and ideally will give me respite and an opportunity to construct the better portions of a book which I have been playing with ideas of for the last half-year or so. I will have to do a fair amount of work at the monastery, but I feel confident that being in such an atmosphere will allow me to reign in my focus and spend time on my own endeavors. It is, after all, an Art Monastery, basically sieged by paperwork and taken over by a venerable community of artists and flipped into a bed-and-breakfast to pay the bills. There should be other artists of all concentrations working and living there as well, so it will hopefully be an incredibly nourishing and replenishing experience. One point of curiosity is that I will not have a laptop, or at least as presently planned I will not. I've never written anything significant without one; the ability to Ctrl-F and save as different files and research via the internet is always something which I have taken for granted. So, this will be a difficulty which needs to be overcome. Pen and paper are something which I have not tangled with in a long time. One reason I write on a computer is that the keyboard allows me faster documentation of my thoughts, and with my brain behind the stream, that is a very good thing. I'll have to slow my processes down when I'm writing on paper, but hopefully that will be more helpful than hindrance. I imagine my individual thoughts will be more fleshed-out, but I am somewhat worried about losing track of where I was going with the larger themes racing through my head while scribbling away at the minor details. Ah well. I'm sure it will work, one way or another.

Let me know if you'd like me to send you a postcard from somewhere~

3/25

3/25

how is it that i had coffee this morning, and now my brain decides to go sluggish on me? must be the whiskey. best guess. one would think that the tea here, oolong, would do the job. yet, no. not at all.

where is the merit in appreciation? here i find myself next to a flurry of quick-witted people. i'm not in the mood, myself...not hardly. but since this happens from time to time, i find it worth noting....and the question has popped up in other manifestations, most notably writing and music. art.

what value is there to be found in mere appreciation, aside from production?

must an appreciator tend towards production at some point? or it it enough simply to enjoy, to have no ambitions in particular for themselves? when i started listening to music, when i started reading what i consider to be decent literature, it came about for me that i began to want to produce it, to spin my own wheels and find expression. now, since i am at the point of scribbling here about it, it seems clear that it is becoming ever more important for me.

as i sit here and hear these people, i realize....there is a fine line between well-placed witticisms and obnoxious overstatements, both in word and in personality. there is no accounting for taste, and some people speak because they have to say something, rather than because they have something to say. maybe a little too harsh. at least these kids are eloquent with their wordings....intelligence is denoted, sometimes too enthusiastically but, who is to say what is too much?

the point remains. what becomes of me, of my mind, of my legacy, if i never produce that which i appreciate? doesn't appreciation require an aptitude for the subject matter, and enough of one to be able to separate your own tastes in it from the general stream of possibilities? an area, room to insert personality and idiosyncrasies? and isn't that, when it comes down to it, what really matters in the world of production? can you separate the words aptitude and skill? i suppose you can...but it seems like the path would be much narrower and easy to follow for someone who had a taste, a preexisting identity within the realm of the subject.

so here i am, struggling and giving an attempt at producing. but what if the larger works don't pan? what then? is an attempt which does not manifest in its entirety necessarily a failure? i want to say that it isn't...but perhaps that is more of a security blanket for myself than anything else.

3/28 (continuation)

what of incomplete works? do they have any merit, ideas pursued, if they never morph into their best (and completed, Kant) manifestations? i remember this moment in college, philosophy class, where it was posited that only actions have any value, and anything which remained only in theory or thought had no value in the real world. i remember being incredibly uncomfortable with this idea, especially when applying it to my life, perhaps because i was only a college student at the time and my entire life existed only in theory at that point. what a candle-snuffing restriction, i thought. i personally think that everything is being accounted for, somewhere...which is an interesting concept, because it may feed into the appraisal or rejection of an ego. ego in some circumstances certainly seems justified, such as when the subject has accomplished recognizable and vast compendiums of progress. these people are allowed by society, as a whole, to become....not necessarily arrogant, but perhaps a bit more discerning in terms of what they do and do not choose to acknowledge, to pay attention to. almost everyone agrees that someone who has proven their worth in a certain capacity or function is allowed leniency in other matters, allowed a certain length of artistic distance from the general problems ruling the rest of the equation. workplaces, as well, follow this same pattern, dividing workforce into factions which have unique focii, and then liminal departments or liasons who bridge the gaps between all these diverse fields being concentrated on individually, thereby connecting the gears and allowing oversight, control, and production. so clearly this is a recognizable and respected practice...perhaps it should be allowed those same respects for potential, for people who have not yet manifested but who feel the thunder at their fingertips.

if ego is really composed of these diverse partitions, however, it becomes increasingly hard to stop a person from being forcibly overbearing with their personality....which actually creates elitism, and corrupts the very practices and concepts, poisons the stream from which those future manifestations would spring. the balance is staggering. one must maintain their own lives, and take accountability in full for any collateral damage that acting profoundly, or egotistically, may incur. it would be obnoxious to be egotistical around the clock, but perhaps there are certain times in which it is beneficial and offers a generative effect to be able to disregard certain facets of everyday life.

let's get a fragment more in depth here, since i feel that the last sentence i wrote was a bit ambiguous. i don't think that condoning arrogance in an ego is ever a good thing; i think that to be more of a vice which should be bred out of our systems in early age, and which potentially is by the harsh realities of childhood in a public schooling system (perhaps that was just my being put-in-place experience). rather, what i mean to say is that there are certain times at which it can be largely beneficial, especially regarding the creation of art, to exude confidence in yourself. the burdens of psychology can be quite a weight in some circumstances; we continually second-guess ourselves and question our ability to finish things out which we begin...question our ability to provide or draw the final line. i know i do this. but from time to time, especially in times of heavy work, a well-founded ego can be essential to the production of intelligent art, and additionally intelligent and artistic living. being freed from the burdens of neuroses and worries, grabbing life and creativity by the horns...these two ideas are interchangeable, but often come off to an uninitiated mind as an inadmissible arrogance. living by the sword, however, is a good practice for an artist. boundaries must be drawn, and actions must be taken and backed by a solid degree of confidence in their application.

A Meditation

Leadership. A pivotal concept in our society, and yet something which so much of our population lacks a propensity for. Even for my own part, I acknowledge that I have gone so far as to actually aim for a lack of responsibility (which could be said to be part and parcel with leadership – for the crux of the matter is the ability to commit to decisions instead of constantly fluctuating) for a good portion of my life. I'm not sure where that lackadaisical desire comes from, but certainly I wanted no part of 'hard work' at the time, no semblance of having to own up to anything which I might have done had I more resolve.

Instead, I felt the need to resign myself to a submissive position. Over time, both in and beyond the workplace, I still feel this urgency to appeal to others, to seek guidance in their words or their actions. I want them firstly to validate me, to give me a purpose and to deal me a set of tasks. Secondarily I want acknowledgment, a rapport with 'superiors' or 'equals' which denotes a mutual respect for each others' functions and responsibilities. Admittedly and thankfully, this propensity no longer commands a large percentile of my working mind-state. I have found motivation – by degrees – within myself, and can utilize these newfound personal desires to craft my time and activities accordingly without outside input or approval. I now encompass my own approval in the best of times, and this is a perspective to be cherished like one's child – which, on some level, it is.

Even still, however, I find myself appealing to others for their input upon myself and my desires. I find this to be a hard habit, or perhaps vice, to exorcise from personal routine. The rut is that I at once acknowledge the rule as being 'to each his own', especially in matters of personal and artistic investment, while still primarily being domesticated by the need for a group acceptance, an outside acknowledgment of my struggles and subsequent trophies. Of what import are trophies, without any organization to put stock in them?

Thus it comes down to the invisible – potentially imagined – metrics of personal and [humanitarian] development. Just as it is with friends who have not been seen for a length of time (thus seeming much changed, based upon the collective number of small changes built up into a broader observation or scheme), so too it is difficult to measure the variables of our mind – that companion which we can never be quite rid of – be they positive or negative, and to what degree they thrive or suffer. There is no way to step 'outside' of ourselves for an accurate portrait, and so we feel that we must rely on the approvals or disapprovals of those who know us best.

This is a flawed system for a variety of reasons. Firstly, people generally exhibit a bias towards reliability: keeping things just as they are. This is not much to the discredit of humanity, for this assumption creates more manageable mental maps and compasses for us as we navigate through the polarities of the world. Counting on things, including people, to remain the same gives us an advantageous ability to be predictive in future scenarios involving known elements. But for this reason, our friends might be discounted as reliable indicators of our own progress or stagnation. To excel beyond the scope of what you previously had been counted on being may conspire in the minds of those who 'knew' you as a negative trait, as a regression from what they previously knew, since now they cannot be sure of what they know. In all matters, perspective is at the heart of valence. [Additionally] to the point, an inquiry can be made as to whether or not we all experience some degree of schadenfreude, for to see another trapped in a state of general inertia regarding some intangible progression of mind and life certainly occasions a mirroring, a validation of one's own self as being in some way superior, somehow further along or in motion. Ego both feeds and starves on distinctions, on partisanship.

Secondly, if we can throw out the whole 'nobody can ever really know anybody else' idea which is so touted in certain circles, I at least feel confident stating that the only reliable appraisal that can be obtained from another person (when we are confine ourselves to the field of artistic developments) would have to come from someone whom is also a student in the same field of expression, and for accuracy of judgment it would have to be someone who was quantifiably superior to you and – as a final caveat – was also familiar with the progress or detriment of your accomplishments to date. To wit, the only worthwhile yardstick for accomplishment is a teacher. This is not to say that one cannot trust or respect the opinions of anyone else, but rather to say that alternative ideas about yourself or your progress are less likely to be accurate in their methods of distinction and divination, or may be more about the work in itself than about its reflections upon you as a unique force of humanity.

I bring these previous points up because true leadership, in its most meritorious sense as I see it, involves a good degree of humility. To lead is to make decisions, and if the input placed into those decisions is fabricated or misleading then it may become negatively repercussive. To be sure there will be repercussions regardless of the path chosen, but a real decision should be incisive: cut to the core of the matter. It should be expansive in its scope; agreeable in as many capacities as possible to as many different components as possible, but when it comes down to bolts it must also be willing to make sacrifices as necessary for its most genuine realization.

The most pertinent decisions which I find myself making these days are the decisions regarding the expenditure of my time. When I say, 'my time', I must also be candid in explaining that this does not only apply to my 'personal time', because in effect – and what many people seem poised to miss – is that all of my time consists of a conscious decision on my part regarding how it is being used. We may feel resigned to certain places or actions which typically orbit around our jobs or our scholastic endeavors, but if you investigate the scope at play within them you realize the frightening degree of freedom which we are in possession of at any given moment of our lives. This realization is the beginning of leadership; it is the most fundamental of all the structural pillars supporting initiative.

What I come to realize more and more these days is that most of the self-governing and actuated principles that my mind operates upon are beginning to lean further and further away from what my 'job' entails; at this point I would consider myself downright tilted. It may be that I am merely disconsolate about daily repetition of activities, etc., but if the feeling is inspected more closely it allows me to see specifically where the conflicts exist. The principle conflict, for my own part, is a snowballing desire to create....perhaps not even tangibly, but to in every way exist and think and, most specifically, to write creatively. To seek out the chaotic, dynamic mechanisms in my mind, to nourish them in whatever ways they crave, and to express and record the experience. I'm not even certain, at this point, that writing will be the medium of choice, but currently I feel that it allows me the widest range of expression and versatility as I already have mental brushes and palettes painstakingly constructed for this canvas. And some really nice pens.

I cannot say with any certainty what this feeling will lead to. But I bring it up in order to directly address a reef which any seafaring motions towards creative independence must necessarily come to, under threat of being foundered...the ability to actively and consciously engage decisions, and to forge ownership – steeled, individual validity – regarding your terms with them. By 'decisions', I don't mean to imply that I am discussing book plots, or pseudonyms, or anything one typically makes creative decisions about. Well, perhaps books to a degree, in my particular case. Instead, however, I mean to associate fragile, momentary decisions with the timeless quality of leadership, and all the connotations which you may bring to the word...which is what I began scribbling about today in the first place.

For some unknown but rooted reason, I seem to have a difficult time of creativity when I set to it in the moment. This is, of course, a world apart from creativity in theory, when ideas flow like wine. Virginia Woolf - “One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made.” If you have tried to create something distinctive, then I'm sure that you too share some knowledge of this anxiety among the front lines of creative forces. This would be entirely tolerable, if it weren't for the fact that it constantly forces you to question yourself. It finds opportunities in which to communicate to you that you are in uncharted territories and that you don't know how to do everything, or even what anything necessarily is. In short, creativity would not be itself if it didn't force you immediately out of your comfort zone.

My instincts until just recently have been to immediately seek reassurance....to stop, to read, to talk to someone safe, to locate comfort quickly. This is a faulty approach, and it lacks the most critical element of success in such matters: personal leadership. Without the strength contained in this engine, your focus will flag, waver, and fail. If you've already sat down to independent creation and accomplished any small part of it, then most likely you are not in terrible shape; no need to panic, you are at least not amongst those who willingly let themselves be entertained into oblivion. Leadership is a muscle, however, and to form resolve and concentrated effort takes a lengthy period of breaking and building.

What must be done is to keep pushing against those waves, because like a coastal tide or reef structure, they only bar your way for a short distance. Once you've navigated the labyrinth of obstacles (which will likely be different each time) and reached a calm focus, real progress can be made, real distance towards the goal. You will still experience catastrophic storms and perils while out at sea, but they will seem more natural, more intentional; you will already be committed to the journey and they will truly seem like challenges which can be overcome, which momentum will push you forward through. Perspective changes significantly when there is no shore in sight. When they are finished, driven through with fortitude, you can again drift along your creative flow; you will have nothing to fight against and the only facet you will need to hold steady to is your orientation amidst the vast horizon of possibilities.

Navigation, however, is a more compound concept than it would seem; nothing that I know of is less straightforward. If you know precisely where you want to end up, then you will have an easier time of it...but as a sacrifice, in a manner of speaking, the journey will have fewer crisis points, less opportunities to discover yourself and your capabilities along the way. For my own part, these crises have been some of the more worthwhile reasons for me to continue writing, even if it doesn't end up amounting to a finished work. To hammer something out, to imbue it with your own personal architecture, to seal it with your fingerprint as a genuine statement about your or the world as you perceive it...this is the real reason to commit to your own leadership, to trust yourself to bear a torch through the darkness and come out somewhere meaningful and symbolic. If you only have profit in mind when you enter into the creative seas, then you might as well resign yourself to being a publisher or a broker instead, for there is no reason, no compulsion for you to make the first or last strokes.

The real reason to create, the most genuine incarnation insofar as I can envision it, is not the moment of completion but rather these smaller victories. A finished work would be nice, but complete realization of my ideals – which also involved defining those ideals to myself in full – is a luxury which I do not expect to achieve anytime soon. For this reason, I don't have a final destination in mind...rather I wander, sometimes aimlessly, sometimes with intense focus, until I experience something like an 'Aha!' moment. This experience is something you are familiar with; it happens in just about every facet of life when something is illuminated to the full extent of your understanding – or in lieu of that, your complete awe. This is the reason to create, and the only reason to share creation is to attempt to gift this intimate moment to others. Sometimes entire books or companies are dedicated to a single, potent moment of thought, which was of such devastating importance to the thinker that it had to be committed to...nothing they had experienced had ever seemed more real, more important to contribute. These moments are the basis of artistic navigation, and they compose the greater part of personal leadership...following the constellations that these individual points compose, as you drift along them through the passage of your life, is the only guide for genuine expression.

Ultimately, if you want to own your work and your life, you have to trust in yourself as a metric. It doesn't matter if you want to lead many people, or just yourself in your personal endeavors...good leadership requires that you have a standard for guidance, that you have a path to follow, even if you may lose sight of it for long lapses of time. This naturally happens when motion is involved. To obtain the focus that is necessary to achieve, you have to have anchors, fixed points upon which your can locate yourself and subsequently pivot off. These points are impossible not to notice; they are impossible to avoid unless you remain stagnant and dig into your routines too fastidiously....what matters is what you make of them, and whether or not you are able to hold them within your vision after they have passed. You might also worry that some fascinations are implanted in you surreptitiously by other people, somehow transferred, or that you have somehow stolen them – but if your interest is genuine, you will know it. The hollow resonance of thieved passions, the faint boredom that you experience when you engage with them is important to distinguish; you must develop a hammer to test and destroy such things in order to be the truest incarnation of yourself possible. The focus and the energy inherent in genuine passions, however, is impossible to mimic. It will define your choices along every step of the way, and illuminate all paths you have yet to travel.

post-processing

i had an interesting experience the other day...i was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, typing away at something or other (or perhaps internetting, as i am also prone to do), and a flash of recognition erupted into me. it wasn't deja-vu, or anything of the sort...i had been sitting next to a wall (a rather thin one, it should be noted), and i picked up on a piece of the conversation in the next room. now, i hear conversations from the guys next door frequently; at least once every day. they're crazy characters, sometimes bursting into song in the middle of their little office. but i have learned to completely tune them out when i'm doing my own thing, so it's rare that i actually pay attention to anything that they are saying. the small fragment that i caught, however, happened to be about myself....not directly, but rather it was about the company that i work at. it wasn't derogatory, it wasn't praise; it was just a passive comment slid into one angle of a joke. but where it gets weird is....i wasn't actually listening to them when they said it.

despite the phalanx of distractions that surround me at any given moment, and despite the fact that i was engrossed in many other things, my senses reached down into me, like a hand, and pulled me up into the cool waters of the present moment. this means, if i understand correctly, that my mind actually has reserve storage for everything which is currently happening. and i think that this concept is amazing. despite the reality that you may not be paying attention - in fact you may be completely distracted - you are still caching information on some level unknown to your conscious mind.

i know for a fact that i didn't hear them talking as it happened....i just wasn't listening. simple fact. but, after the actual conversation had occurred, my mind decided to grind it through its economizing machine, just to see if any of it were useful to me. so it stored all these impressions that i was unaware of, packaged them up in some obscure encryption to keep them from me, and sorted them neatly into piles of relevance. beginning of a joke: irrelevant. to the bin with it. vocal inflections: irrelevant. binned. company name: relevant! ring-ring! hallo! what is this that we have here? and then my mind, sufficiently prompted, investigated the situation. it retracted, uncrumpled papers from the bin; in fact i was able to recall the joke in its entirety with no problems whatsoever. this was very odd; i'm certain all of this happened in the snapping of fingers, but still i regarded the ensuing sensation with some degree of scrutiny, and found my recognition of the thing to have happened definitively after the reality had lapsed.

and holy shit! how amazing is that?

this is encouraging, enlivening, for a number of reasons. i've always personally been fascinated with the mind...seeking ways to understand how it makes sense of this chaos that we label our world (Recursive with a capital, i know), and constantly prodding/asking it for insight into its inner-workings. rarely does it give any non-cryptic answers, but every once in a while i am present while it slips up, which offers a whole new perspective on matters. this is one such instance. i wonder how long such information is stored? is it possible that it is still stored outside of us, lingering in the atmosphere, and an uber-short timeframe is the key to being able to still disentangle it from all the other static which spins its wheels perpetually, replacing and realigning? is this something which you could train your mind to perform better and better, with more regularity, until you were able to recall, to access this liminal brain-space, consciously and actively? i could use some extra brain-bank, personally...i always describe my mental function to people as 'a little different', in that i have astounding recall for minute detail, but only once i have a serious trigger with which to work, a hook to hang my reminiscence.

when you're strange

it is entirely remarkable how we are constantly surrounded by strangers. do you have those words, sometimes, where you always miss the same letter when typing a word, and must go back in order to fix it? strangers is one such word for me; it always ends up 'stanger'. which is not so much even a word; i checked just now. regardless. looking around, i find an overwhelming feeling, a filling-up, with the sheer force of strangeness around me. i don't know any of these people, yet we share such a base commonality that i am able to find comfort in their presence, and perhaps comfort too in that they, for the most part, do not know each other....i am not the odd mind out; i am just as curvy of a jigsaw-piece as all of them, as far as any distinct one is concerned.

they are all focused on different tasks, different projects; all have different thoughts rifling through their minds even just now. there are some moments which rob us of this individuality...say for instance that a red-mortar firecracker goes off in this coffee nook right now. bang! everyone flinches, every mind is void and catches pace with the circumstances and general confusion just as quickly as the others, for the most part. then we are together, somehow. we have all had the same experience, at the same time, and while we may not consciously acknowledge it we have been bonded to these people to a degree; we have been the same as them through circumstance, they have shared in ourselves. on larger scales, this is school spirit, this is patriotism, this is the flexing and uncording of the various muscles of the humanities.

but i feel comfortable around all these people, despite the concrete reality that no firework has bound our shared existence. it seems to be bound on other levels, less immediate and less discernible. i am somewhat surprised to find this comfort within me....not shocked, necessarily, as it has been building, rumbling around, for as long as i can remember, but at least a little surprised to find the ease with which i regard them. just like anybody i have clasped onto my fair share of social anxieties throughout my youth, but at some point they were hammered at by something...good...the human spirit perhaps, and partaking in the realm of it...and ever since then my anxieties (at least, the social ones) have been crumbling, like a cracked and eroding reservoir wall, spilling more positivity and more goodwill as time continues to batter away at it. for all the uncertainty that i could choose to see in this room, knowing that in any human lie sparks and clashes between dignified Ubermensch and primal beast, instead i am experiencing an outpouring of kinship and warm curiosity.

it is funny how difficult it sometimes seems to meet people, such as when you move to a new city. i'm certain, at this moment, that all it really takes is patience, and then just the tiniest pinch of the outgoing archetype to be summoned within you. looking around, i barely recognize anybody...maybe a face of two that i have seen elsewhere, but nothing solid enough for confirmation. but i recognize that other people, like myself, run in general patterns. you are bound to meet people time after time, despite the randomness of the city, because people seem to be creatures of habit. unless you never venture outside the confines of your walls, you will of course see the same people again and again...perhaps not every day, perhaps not always in the same places...but it will happen, and the only way to not take advantage of that situation is to stay silent, antisocial. or to be looking too....specifically.

the problem, i believe, if there is one, is a tendency to not see people. normally, i take so little notice of other people, other than to regard their general occupation of space and time (and perhaps attractiveness, natch). all these people are incredible, multifaceted minds, flexing and fluxing in ways i cannot even begin to comprehend, but until i make some recognizable contact i resign them to one dimension, just a flat-frame appearance, and leave them at that. i feel bad about this, but really, what more are we to do? i could spend my entire life trying to meet everyone that i could, and still not be able to tackle more than just my own state (or perhaps one more at an extreme best!) additionally, meeting people would become meaningless; i would be saturated with information and it would leak out of my brain faster than 9th grade geometry class. so, it is reasonable to only expect to meet so many people...it just seems a shame, with all the interesting things going on in the minds of the people, all the projects and emotions and expressions which remain intriguingly and perplexingly bottled to me.

on the upside, as a writer, i am beginning to pick up more on the realities and expressions of the people whom i do know, and even beyond that beginning to culture an ability to observe someone whom i do not know and divine something core of them (or perhaps just my own imaginings, but that will do fine for myself and my work). it is incredibly enriching and endlessly interesting, to the point where i must draw a solid line between the observing and the recording, just to ensure that i get something tangible completed instead of whiling away in a fog of thoughts and inspirations that might slip into dizzied memory without a measure of ink.

i am basically never bored anymore.

wow

it has been a seriously long passage of time since i have pasted up any words on this thing. a lot has happened; details are unimportant and unwarranted; more of a telephone thing anyway. so, what has been on my mind of late?

how long has it been since you have taken a lengthy, analytical and prognostic look at your life? are we settling for the concerns that we have now, which become so overwhelming and eclipse the backgrounds behind them? i feel relatively complacent of late, which always pings as a red-flag status for me once i realize that it has been going on. it's summertime, and the living is easy...money that was made is now spent. weekends, so longed for and anticipated, are shrunken in a haze of relaxation and sloth instead of being charted with intriguing mental cartography. all is fine, i am young...but i am beginning to feel the pangs of frivolity, the lament for lack of accomplishment and distinction.

i am at a loss for how to describe my job; it is good and i feel fortified, insulated by it. at the same time, i feel like it thieves forty hours a week from me - more counting transit - that could be the blankets and backpacks of a genuine pioneering. it isn't that it takes all my time...a large chunk to be sure, but not all of it. but i feel drawn toward vivacity, towards the city, being young and ever-awake. i feel like maintaining friendships is absolutely essential, and rewarding, and that such a thing should not be abandoned for lofty artistic dreams...yet in the mathematical set i am working with, job + friends + sleep = matt at 26. wedging more in has proven difficult.

i have also come to acknowledge that relaxation is essential. this plays into the idea of friendships, because a good friendship is stress-relieving instead of stress-inducing. my job creates stresses; hell, just being inside my mind creates stresses of its own. decompression is a must, if i don't want to end up a crazy person, aimlessly wandering the alleys of Portland. if the equation is as simple as it seems (probably not the case), then what i need readjustment in is my work. do i try to find something else; something incorruptibly-fulfilling and which broadens my horizons as an artist? do i just need something as simple as to pare down my hours, such that i have more time to commit to personal projects and still stay afloat financially? finances are an argh. i see now how adults become progressively more preoccupied with such concerns, and how it has the ability to rob you of so much potential. i have some degree of scorn for our current incarnation of the capitalist system based upon this, but here is probably not the time or place to complain about how you can't stay afloat by scribbling away your days in coffee shops and mountaintops, even if it were for the advancement of the human spirit and all that riff-raff.

so, for the summertime being, i am currently stunned into inaction against this front. it marches over my mind with its full strength, and i plan to observe and characterize it before moving my own armada against its dark and foreboding will. i just need to find a way to set reminders for myself, little mementos that disarm my fear of its structuring ways since i know another, more ideal life, rooted somewhere in the deeper portions of my thought. i have faith at least in myself, as long as i am successful in keeping myself the same self. the people we naturally evolve into have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, different centers of gravity based on their abacus-arrangements and allotments.

a passing of time

well.
it has been quite some time, hasn't it? lots of happenings, changes of seasons, musics ebbing and flowing through my list of recent listens and new discoveries. things are always similar, however; let us see if i can pick up the pace of this writing as quickly and as intently as i remember myself having done in the past.

a quick update on myself. i have been reading quite a bit, all manner of short books which satiate the mind for a time. i've been noticing lately, in light of these books, that books with a heavy density of ideas seem to leave less lasting impressions with me on the whole. of course, reading philosophy is an entirely different gear of mental motion than a casual story, but still i have to note the finding that, for a reason which i may dive into, readings which overwhelm me with the rapidity of their ground-shattering ideas tend to slip into grey area of my mind. i find that with shorter, more spaced and storylike books, there is less of a chance of being overwhelmed by the waves which crash into you; you have more down or recovery time and as such your mind has more of an opportunity to turn over the ideas which are given to you and do something memorable with them....even make them, in some incarnation, your own. with a lot of the writing that i would typically read, the writers are incredibly profound and prolific, so much so that it takes an equal mind to keep up with them unless one wants to get all 'literary analysis' and pore over every page for a matter of hours. to do this disrupts the pace, and so i cannot resign myself to it. and yet, being less intelligent than these giants of writing, the crashings of surf, their own minds against mine in turbulent and one-sided conversation, tend to rip my footing out from underneath me, erode my balance, and leave me dizzied and disoriented. many times i cannot tell whether or not i pay more attention at any given time to the story itself, or the ideas which it carries in its pockets.

this is a lesson learned for me in writing: do not over-pace, do not saturate with intensity. a gifted writer is one who, without condescending, can thresh out his ideas and their forms almost surgically, taking one piece and pinning it to a page...keeping the entirety shrouded until it is ready to be revealed as the sum of its parts. good writing is archaeological, it is constancy in your ability to dust and connect, connect and dust. i think personally that i used to have an idea about how my writing would be this immensely good thing that could not be ignored for all its potency, and yet what i come to realize more and more is that a tasteful balance is the essence of one's ability to write coherently, impressively. there are artistic aesthetics which must be adhered to, for threat of entirely butchering the very concepts that you are attempting to reveal to your audience by their misapplication or neglect.

in short: the human mind, at least insomuch as i can speak about it from my own experience, is something which cannot be rushed. it is a delicate recipe, a plant which grows in its own distinct conditions and which only flowers at the correct temperature specifications. i would call these temperatures "focus", for lack of a better...focus can be achieved by a set of conditions that must be conducive, conductive of real thought. many of the books i have read are harsher environments, attainable only to the most adaptable and giving minds, and often i find myself stumbling through them for a lack of interest which really is anything but. it is an incompatibility, an incompatibility. learning, challenge, must be paced appropriately or it will founder before making it off of the shore. part of this responsibility lies on the person who would seek knowledge...you have to prime yourself in order to work with what you can. but in addition, part of the responsibility lies in the hands of the teacher, in order that they might create a lesson with proper pacing and enough tangible ties to allow for navigation through it.

i hope that i have a gift for storytelling.

halt....hammerzeit

so it seems clear that i am stepping away from writing smaller entries, and launching into a larger piece of work. but it's daunting, at best, so i think that from time to time i will still be finding spare change to spend on some abstract and unaffiliated subjects here. this site was always a good cathartic release for me, and i'm glad to have the vent here where i can always find it.

memorial day weekend! i should by all rights be excited about this single-day-more-than-usual break for working purposes, but it seems i have been signed up to go to Bend for a good portion of my time off. hopefully that will be fun; if nothing else it will be good to get into a truly fresh area where my mind can recharge, and perhaps recapture a piece of originality. even though i have of broad spectrum of things that i do these days, i feel that for the most part they are things which i have constantly done before. and there is a definite charm to reliving experiences, especially since they always hold some new context even if in small degree...it has been on my mind that repeatability, replay-value, is among one of the foremost tenets of the american economy. sometimes you just want to know what you're getting, or know what kind of atmosphere you are going to immerse yourself in. i do it all the time; holing up in coffee shops because i welcome their kaleidoscopic atmosphere, while still having a comfortable and calming familiarity. at times, though, i get burnt with doing the same things and going to the same places. these ideas start to coagulate, to clump together into a ball like a putty, and they become less and less distinct from one another. it is a phenomenon which i regard thoughtfully, and often, because it seems like the larger themes of my thought and life are reflected in these massed-stars; they are certainly useful if only to illustrate and make more tangible the waves of time passing over me, and how what i think about changes in both manner and mood. but they also, at times, begin to acquire a stale taste which makes me eager for something new.

i am at odds with time lately. my weekends seem to flit away, which would not be so concerning if they weren't in contrast to my weekdays, upon which i typically do not get anything meaningful done. and let me separate senses there, because i do have a full-time job, and a good one at that....i just don't think that i accomplish anything monumental or inspiring while a chip away at it every monday through friday~ my time balances are all mixed-about, because one must save some time for relaxation or risk excess stress. it would be nice to have more time to write, more time to paint, more time for music. always people think it would be 'nice to have more time'. i realize that it must be made, and i am making it, but i worry that my life-formula is currently incorrect because i feel like i am always struggling with time-management. it does not seem, as it sometimes does, as though time is in my corner.

on the other hand, i am much happier, overall, than i have ever been. i can't remember being so satisfied with everything since i was a child. i have complaints, of course...nobody wants an office for 40 hours. but what is irregular, what seems different than ever before, is that all the time i find myself with a genuine smile on my face, and more goodwill towards everyone on the planet than i can usually muster. i have come to a lot of realizations, which ones supposes could be considered maturities, about people in general, and i've subsequently found myself to be in possession of a lot less inward negativity than i used to exhibit. perhaps it comes from having more personal confidence, and being less worried about what others think. i can't pin down the roots precisely (natch; they are underground), but i know that things are better, in so many ways, than they had been for me during say, high school and college. i am actually happier in a lot of ways than i was in college, the so-called 'golden' years, and i take that to be a positive thing. perhaps i am nourishing myself in all the right ways, and have nothing at all to complain about~ least of all time.

perhaps i can find a way, today, to make peace with time. that sounds infinitely pleasurable. here go.

oh.....GO NUGGETS!!~

aw

you know what's twisted, in retrospect? elementary and middle-school magazine drives. seriously, it seems like there should have been some child-labor laws violated there.

but man do those mag companies know how to market their shit - leeching onto cute little kids who need money for field-trip funding~ then rewarding them with toys that probably cost twenty cents to batch up in china. just awful.

some shadowed places

let me theorize for a moment here. i had a dream the other night that was oddly coraline-esque, in the sense that i was struggling with some dominant monster in the house that i grew up in. i don't remember a lot of the details; i wish i had written closer to the actual event but i haven't been finding the time lately, and it just struck me upside the head with its oddity. i do remember that i was in my parents' bedroom, though as characteristic in dreams it was not so much the same in furnishings, or size, just in relative location and perhaps general shape. this is an energy-center of a house for children, so i can understand why my mind would choose it as a setting of some sort. i'm sure that i also branched, at some point, into my own childhood room, which was just across the hallway...an easy jaunt even if progress was hindered by battle, or whatever~

i'm not really sure where i intend to go with this prelude...it strikes me as, not necessarily unusual, but quite curious that so many of my dreams happen in or around my old house. you would think that my mind would be engaging nightly with newer problems, newer ideas, and setting them appropriately in my new surroundings...but perhaps these are too volatile, in my lack of knowledge of them, to paint adequate pictures for a backdrop. i'm fairly certain that my themes, the ideas that my dreams are really digging their fingers into, hashing out, are more intelligent than they used to be...that they deal with different issues as they develop, as i come across them in my actual experience. but they come as ghosts in my old haunts, which, for my part, was unexpected.

so, the parents' bedroom was unique, usually not a typical setting. there are other places which recur with more frequency...namely the backyard. we had a good-sized backyard at my house in the springs, and i suppose that i spent a good deal of time in it. in the dreams, however, it is permeated with a sense of mystery, of vagueness and enormous, almost incomprehensible, size. i wonder about myself as a child, and in the wonderment i find this charmed recurrence of earlier self. it makes me wonder about the most basic sensations in life....that of the security of the home; the focus of life for everyone that you know. the comfort found inside those walls, and how that is imbued upon a childish mind....what the outside would have meant to me, then. i imagine myself, done up in blue one-piece winnie-the-pooh pajamas, gazing in rapt bewilderment out the glass doors in our main entryway, trying to decipher the strange wilderness, the unexplored depths of our backyard. what does a two-year old think of a tree? of grass and flowers? do they have the same positive valence that we would attribute to them now? part of me thinks that they would be frightening totems (head on pole) of the outside world, of complete loss of control.

of course, to a child, unknowns behave in different ways than they do to us now. our adult selves build up apprehensions based upon our past experiences; they fortify us from the outside world with snowglobe-like bricks, each teeming with motion and memory, each distorting the outside world more and more as we look through them, sometimes not even being able to see past the memories themselves. children become apprehensive, fearful, but only after their base comforts have already been stripped from them. a child misses his mother only once she is gone, not before; a child does not fear being lost until it actually arises. we tangle with these scenarios before they exist, and in that we lose something valuable in our interface with the world - we begin to focus more and more, and ultimately we see less and less.

so here i am, standing with my hands and nose pressed against the glass separating my child self from his house's backyard. squirrels scamper by, and i do not understand them. i wonder what sensations they call to my heart.

if i had to guess (since the time i am describing is before memory), and i am going to infer from my dreams now, i would venture to say that i felt fear. not a gripping terror, but an ambiguous shadow floating just beyond my perception, darkening. i say this, because in my dreams i find this same darkness to it. it has apparently been chosen as the place where i work out most of my unconscious struggles. i wish i had a running count of the number of dreams and/or nightmares which at some point trample through that backyard, which in reality has not a trace of ominousness to it but, who can say what a mind will twist anything into at the end of the day~ different sections of that backyard are honeycombed off in my mind; each attributed with memories and characteristics, properties which are real to me but which never belonged.

additionally, as if that weren't enough, i have an amplification of this wilderness....i have my family's cabin, secluded deep in the woods of kenosha pass. this was the spot for family vacations, an inexpensive spot to get away from it all, and i'm certain that it is tethered to numerous memories for everyone who goes there so it is a logical place to return to. i have spent time at this cabin as far back as i can remember, and always it has been a holy temple to me, an observation of the depths of nature and a retreat from the world as i knew it. this cabin is a fantastic place; perhaps you, reader, will be taken there one day~ but it has also developed, for me, as an extremely psychologically-powerful token. i go to this cabin, in my dreams, in my unconscious mind, when apparently there are mountains of rubble in my head that need to be worked through. almost always this cabin appears to me as a fractured house of the most haunted and haunting capacity possible. always there are deep-seated ghosts, literally; always it is overrun with the raw power of nature, crowned with black, spindly insects, the wardens of what deeper unsettled spirits lie slumbering there. the woods around this cabin host my deepest dreams, my deepest indications of what being 'lost', or pursued by the night, feels like. always it is an incredible adventure just to get to this place, rarely by car as would be expected; typically i must forge my way through snowfields and packs of savage animals, cross extreme conditions and distances in pursuit of something i do not know, at least not consciously. i am never sure what the motivation for returning to this place is, but always there is something drawing me towards it.

i do not know why these nature spots have become the seats for my subconscious psyche. all i can say is that they are bottled with unspeakable things; they reflect a different side of the world, as if i had stood in the middle of them and used the mirror from A Link to the Past. things do not make sense there, and everything is darkened. i thought it notable, towards the goal of figuring myself out a little better...and it always helps me to sort out my thoughts more clearly, this 'writing'.


shhh! listen:
royksopp - "royksopp forever"

today

"friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."
~ C. S. Lewis

how good to have friends, people that we can merge ourselves with; the refraction of perspectives gives telescopic sight. what we can bounce off of a friend is a concept, a notion of ourselves that we have gathered, and we present it freely...a concept which is taken, and puttied, and molded in another mind, mirrored, until we really begin to get a better idea of what we meant in the first place. they can show us things, they can take us farther...obliterating our boundaries and creating impressions of some unexplored territory to the east. they will notice different things, they will append our own selves until we begin to merge the lines and become confused. and then they position us, they help us to see where we fit within this larger picture. they bring our artisan selves, our works and spirit, to places that we have not physically or emotionally been to. places that we shall not know for some time, but which could alter our way of looking at life.

my friends are powerful forces. for them i would burn my books, my money, my car, my apartment. i would sacrifice these things to do real good for them. time is never 'spent' with them; it is savored thoroughly. it is crafted and shared. to spend time is the function of a job, lathing away wafer-thin slices of us so as to preserve the rest (for what else is the remainder intended?) and in the space with our friends, in nurturing environments, we grow back to our former selves. we relearn skills, we reconstruct our memories which had been partially-stripped. we are the children of our freely-chosen experiences.

so damn, it's great to be here. my people build me up, when i am down; they recall the shapes that i am missing at any given time (which takes a fair bit of analysis and knowledge of myself on their part), conjure them from our shared spaces, energies, and present them to me swathed in new packaging. or forgotten packaging, which is the best sort. i could only hope to do them this same service when it is needed. there is responsibility inherent in knowing someone (if they can be said to be 'known'), that we must keep vigil over them for when they are in a time of need. we all need, at some point. being close, that is really something to be proud of....not independence, which callously walls the heart against hope.

i hope some of that made sense.

"treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
~ Goethe

happy patties

it might seem, by all outward appearances, that i am slacking largely. i haven't posted anything on here for something like a fortnight. but even so, it doesn't mean i haven't been writing.....instead i am trying to work on *gasp* projects, bigger things, which is nice because usually i can't screw up the courage to embark on something larger than what i typically write on here. explosions of thought. perhaps you will find them here as they are developing, or as they emerge from whatever sort of chrysalis they might happen to be in. that i cannot say for sure. but,

isn't that exciting?

i think it is.